American Complacency

In Palestine, starvation has reached the point of no return, meaning even if food becomes available, they will likely still die of malnutrition. Humanitarian aid trucks sit just outside, but instead of feeding the dying, Israel is blocking them from entering.

Ethnic cleansing is nothing new, but the advent of social media means we are seeing the starving, not just hearing about them on the news. I have seen countless videos of children with sunken eyes, bones poking like they’re pushing out of the skin. I’ve seen pictures of adult men who resemble scrawny teenage boys, carrying their family members. We are watching humans be killed.

At the same time as the news of 85% of the population reaching malnutrition as a death sentence, AOC voted in favor of continuing funding to Israel, citing that cutting funding would only add to the innocent deaths. AOC’s National DSA endorsement was lost last summer because of her inaction towards the Palestinian genocide. How do we as a country, as a people, see what is happening in the world, and not resort to action?

I think an understanding of where we are is incredibly important: Israel is forcing starvation onto Palestinian people.

These are mothers, fathers, and children, who are being killed: these aren’t statistics, they are human beings. In his book, One Day, everyone will have Always been Against This, Omar El Akkad says, “When we name the dead… it is customary to note the number of children obliterated, because the men are assumed to be terrorists, and the woman might be terrorists or at the very least go on to create them” (p. 26).

85% of Palestinian people have reached stage 5 of malnutrition. That is 1,785,000 people. Detaching the actual number of people from a statistic allows us to detach from the fact that 1.78 people are dying of forced starvation at the hands of Israel and the United States.

The Democratic party's inability to influence any change or take a stand on anything meaningful is killing people. The Republican party’s innate lack of empathy towards anyone but themselves is killing people. The American people's inability to mobilize for power is killing people. American complicity shall not be forgotten by history.